Automotive companies are looking to provide new features for their vehicles, even on traditionally simple components such as latches. Features such as “set and slam latching”, double-locking and power-locking are rapidly becoming standard features. For rear doors, child-locks are virtually mandatory. At the same time, automotive manufacturers are looking to standardize parts in order to reduce assembly costs. Therefore, it is desirable to produce a door latch that can accommodate different features within one packaging. For instance, key-only locking (to prevent people from locking their keys in their car) may be desirable for some models or sales regions, but not others. Thus, the latch design must be able to accommodate latches that have and don't have this feature.
Additionally, the latch still needs to be reliable and provide manual fail safes for these new features. For instance, manual locking must be provided in addition to power-locking. Moreover, the manual locking must be able to override the power-locking feature when used.